Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/76

 I can," he cried aloud, jumped from the bed and went downstairs.

As he went downstairs he felt a tremendous sense of liberation. It was as though he had, after many hesitations and fears, passed through the first room successfully and closed the door behind him. Now there was the second room to be confronted.

What he immediately confronted was the garden of the hotel. The sun was slowly setting in the west, and great amber clouds, spreading out in swathes of colour, ate up the blue.

The amber flung out arms as though it would embrace the whole world. The deep blue ebbed from the sea, was pale crystal, then from length to length a vast bronze shield. The amber receded as though it had done its work, and myriads of little flecks of gold ran up into the pale blue-white, thousands of scattered fragments like coins flung in some God-like largesse.

The bronze sea was held rigid as though it were truly of metal. The town caught the gold and all the windows flashed. In the fresh evening light the grass of the lawn seemed to shine with a fresh iridescence—the farther hills were coldly dark.

Several people were walking up and down the gravel paths pausing before going in to dinner. In the golden haze only those things stood out that